Organizations such as universities, corporations, non-profit entities, and government agencies are often structured into multiple departments each of which has members or employees assigned thereto. In order to facilitate communications with members of a department or even a group within a department, most organizations configure group mailboxes for each group and/or department containing the email addresses of each its respective members. In the context of the present invention group and group mailbox are used interchangeably to signify an organizational entity having a plurality of members subscribed thereto, and configured to facilitate communication therebetween by way of email.
Depending on the structure of the organization, persons may be members to more than one group and thus more than one group mailbox. Alternatively, a person may be a member of a department but not of a particular group within the department. Additionally, as a person's role within the organization changes, such as for example reassignment to a different project, etc., the person's membership to the group mailboxes should reflect the role change.
However, often times changes in group membership is not immediately reflected in the group mailbox member list. Instead, a manager of the group mailbox will need to add or remove an email address manually when a change to the group is made. This requires prompt notification of the change to and timely action by the group mailbox manager. Consequently, in many instances former members of a group will continue to receive emails from a group mailbox to which the person no longer belongs. This can cause annoyance and clutter in a recipient's mailbox. In addition, information to which the former group member should not be privy to may be improperly sent to the former group member.